The roofing material we chose specifically as it is recognised by the World Health Organisation as a suitable material to collect drinking water for humans and animals. It doesn't release any particles or chemicals like some rooves and it has no nooks and crannies where beasties or algaes could collect. It's also made from recycled and organic materials which I think wins it some extra points too. It's called Onduline and is available in brick red or dark green.
The gutters were installed a while back and although we have a slight gradient issue, they are generally pretty good. They are PVC type material and are white which is supposed to prevent them heating up too much in the sun and preventing algaes and germs from growing.
There's only one downpipe so far and it goes down below the house, round the back, where it channels the rainwater into a first flush system. This is a 50 litre tank which I think used to be used to tranport some type of vegetable and has a tightly sealed lid (or should have had - in the end it took a bit of work to find a seal to make it water tight). On top of the tank there is a 2 inch pipe, fitted onto the lid with the help of the neck of a water drum to connect the two. There is another pipe coming off at a right angle to divert water to the storage tanks. On top of the pipe is a catchment tray (half a gallon water bottle) with a rubber filter on it to allow the water from the down pipe to pass into the tank but to divert away the beetles and leaves from the roof. They basically just slide off the filter because its at an angle.
Inside the first flush tank is a plastic ball which floats when the tank fills up, blocking the neck of the tank meaning that any fine sediment which got through the filter cant slosh back up the pipe but rather stays in the tank. The tank also has a tap at the bottom which allows the water to dribble out slowly after each rain meaning that the first water from each rainstorm will always go into that tank, repeating the process each time. Once the tank is full, the rest of the water from the down pipe is then diverted along another pipe which comes off the first at a right angle and flows into the top of one of the 1000 litre storage tanks. On the top of the storage tank is a very fine, stainless steel filter which will catch any unexpected flies, grit etc so that they dont contaminate our water supply.
We are just waiting for two more 1000 litre tanks to be delivered so that we can connect them up in sequence and have our water storage organised. Some sources suggest clorinating the water and others say that it's fine as it is for household use. I'd rather not clorinate as we plan to have a filter system for the kitchen anyway, either UV or the standard carbon systems that you see in a lot of houses here.
The house is already plumbed up. There aren't any loos or sinks or anything yet but we are assured that everything is in place for the moment we install them. The header tank is back on the roof having taken a short flight into the neighbours garden a couple of weeks ago and the pump is wired up to the solar panels so that with the switch of a button, water starts making its way up to the roof giving us clean, pressurised water straight from the tap - or it will when we install one!
The platform is there by the water tank ready for the solar water heater and all we need to do is climb up and hook it up to the water when we get it. We also saw a solar water heater on show a couple of days and they had it out in the open, it was not especially sunny but it was certainly not dark either and we tested the water, it was piping hot! I'm now more hopefull about the whole thing as up until now we hadn't really seen one in action and I had my doubts about how warm the water would get - now I'm wondering where we can get mixer taps because we could be at risk of a scalding!
So, we're getting closer! Tony's itching to get the water tanks delivered because it's raining torrentially most afternoons and with his system pretty much done, it's frustrating to be giving the hens mains water from the neighbours!
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